Star Trek: The Animated Series airing order vs production order

[Cap'n Calhoun]

Do we have any insights into why the production order and the airdate order differed so much for The Animated Series?

For TOS it seems like much of it was a combination of network preferences and accounting for which episodes were complete in time, so the order often wasn't what the writers were originally aiming for. ("Catspaw" comes to mind.) Usually doesn't make much difference once you get past the first half-dozen or so, but many strongly prefer watching in production order for this reason, and Memory Alpha generally defaults to production order on pages like https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/TOS_Season_1 and https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/2266 .

For TNG forward it seems that most of these changes were creatively-driven, and while the Star Trek Chronology preferred production order for early TNG, it switched to relying on airdate order once multiple showings were airing. Memory Alpha defaults to airdate order for these shows on pages like https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/TNG_Season_1 and https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/2364 .

For TAS, the production order and airdate order are probably more different than on any other series. It seems like airdate order is a near-universal default, including at Memory Alpha on https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/TAS_Season_1 and https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/2269 (though I see that didn't used to be the case per https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/2269?type=revision&diff=2297995&oldid=2294716 ).

(I use Memory Alpha for examples, but most other places I've seen tend to rely on airdate order for TAS.)

Any idea why the airdate order is so different from the production order? Or why so many tend to default to airdate order when listing TAS episodes? Is it purely convenience since it doesn't make much difference when watching and the airdate order is (historically) easier to find? Or is this in support of the airdate order being a creative choice by D.C. Fontana and company?

 

[Christopher]

Or is this in support of the airdate order being a creative choice by D.C. Fontana and company?

Airdate order was usually up to the network, not the producers. That's why networks preferred shows to have minimal continuity -- so that their schedulers would be free to arrange the episodes in whatever order suited the network's needs rather than having to follow the makers' preferred order.

It could be that there was no reason at all for choosing a particular order. Episodes would've been delivered on physical media, film or video reels, and it could just be that the network had multiple complete episodes sent to them ahead of time and just grabbed them off the shelf in a random order. Or maybe they reviewed a set of episodes and decided which ones meshed best with the other shows' episodes that were airing that week.


There's also the third order for TAS, the one used in Alan Dean Foster's Star Trek Logs. Comparing the Log order to the airdate order:

Log One: 1, 2, 3
Log Two: 6, 4, 7
Log Three: 9, 10, 8
Log Four: 11, 12, 5
Log Five: 13, 17, 16
Log Six: 20, 19, 21
Log Seven: 22
Log Eight: 15
Log Nine: 18
Log Ten: 14

Foster's order is the only one that has any continuity behind it, since he added interstitial material tying the stories together into a continuous narrative. I imagine a lot of people prefer to assume TAS happened in that order because of it.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Do we have any insights into why the production order and the airdate order differed so much for The Animated Series?

For TAS, I say production order means nothing at all. It was a Saturday morning cartoon. The costumes and sets did not evolve one bit from beginning to end. The characters were all in their final states for the entire series. The show's half-hour format did not allow for character growth, show-memory, or the finely observed human behavior we would later get in Mad Men and The Sopranos. Also, the animation style was incapable of conveying the facial nuances of great acting, closing another window into possible character evolution.

NBC's original airdate order is how the show's oldest and most loyal fans remember the thing. If anybody out there has a sentimental preference, that's it. And it happens that "Beyond the Farthest Star" was a fantastic opener on that first Saturday morning. I was happy with it.

 

[mb22]

And it happens that "Beyond the Farthest Star" was a fantastic opener on that first Saturday morning. I was happy with it.

And certainly more original than "More Tribbles More Troubles", the first production order episode.

 

[Christopher]

And certainly more original than "More Tribbles More Troubles", the first production order episode.

Well, only because "More Tribbles" is such a direct rehash that that's a low bar to clear. If you think about it, both of Samuel Peeples's episodes, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "Beyond the Farthest Star," have a lot in common. Their titles convey similar ideas. They both involve the ship probing beyond the outskirts of the galaxy. And they both involve the crew coming under attack from a powerful malevolent being, although that one's more of a stretch, admittedly.

 

[Tallguy]

Well, only because "More Tribbles" is such a direct rehash that that's a low bar to clear.

It's as much of a rehash as Best of Both Worlds is a rehash of Q Who. They both have tribbles and Cyrano Jones. And they both have Kirk getting covered in tribbles. And they both have grain.

The second one is a running space battle, closer to Journey to Babel than to The Trouble with Tribbles. The second one has Cyrano Jones himself as the MacGuffin. In the second one the Klingons are openly hostile. There is no cold-war subterfuge, they just want Jones. They have no interest in the grain or the Federation. Actually they just want the Glommer.

 

[Christopher]

It's as much of a rehash as Best of Both Worlds is a rehash of Q Who. They both have tribbles and Cyrano Jones. And they both have Kirk getting covered in tribbles. And they both have grain.

They have the Enterprise encountering Cyrano Jones, tribbles, and Koloth & Korax while they're delivering a triticale variant to Sherman's Planet. There's way too much coincidence in there.

 

[Tallguy]

They have the Enterprise encountering Cyrano Jones, tribbles, and Koloth & Korax while they're delivering a triticale variant to Sherman's Planet. There's way too much coincidence in there.

Sure. But one would never call I, Mudd a "rehash" of Mudd's Women.

Although they were in the same part of space tending to related tasks. Still quite the coincidence but it's at least motivated.

I hope Sherman's Planet is a nice place. The Enterprise has put a lot of work into it.

 

[Cap'n Calhoun]

It's worth noting that the VHS cassettes (which is how I first watched most of the show) use the production order. I believe the DVDs use airdate order.

There's also the third order for TAS, the one used in Alan Dean Foster's Star Trek Logs. Comparing the Log order to the airdate order:

True. Looks like that was probably the basis for the timeline in Voyages of Imagination and the Memory Beta timeline at https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Memory_Beta_Chronology:_2270s .

Also stardate order, but that way lies madness.

 

[Christopher]

Sure. But one would never call I, Mudd a "rehash" of Mudd's Women.

Because the only thing those two have in common is Harry Mudd himself. My point is that so many different elements coincidentally come together at the same time that it beggars disbelief. It's one thing if the Enterprise just encountered Cyrano Jones and tribbles again. I could even marginally buy that they might run into Koloth and Korax at the same time too, since it stands to reason that the same ships would be assigned to the same region of space and would have a reasonable chance of running into each other more than once. But to have it happen at the exact same time that the Enterprise is delivering another souped-up triticale variant to Sherman's Planet? The improbability of all those elements converging again is so great that I'd expect a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias to materialize out of nowhere.

 

[Tallguy]

The one piece I would have taken out would have been Koloth. Especially if it's not going to be William Campbell. There's no point. Generic Klingon will be fine. (But like you said, this is his beat just like it's Kirk's.)

Otherwise they are running grain to Sherman's planet which is on the Klingon border and is near the last known location of Cyrano Jones who was also last seen with far too many tribbles.

This is more the conflict between "Does the Enterprise have a regular patrol or is it boldly going?" Which the answer tends to be "Yes".

 

[Christopher]

Otherwise they are running grain to Sherman's planet which is on the Klingon border and is near the last known location of Cyrano Jones who was also last seen with far too many tribbles.

No, the last known location of Cyrano Jones was Space Station K-7, where he was sentenced to clean up all the tribbles. It was while he was on leave from K-7 that he found and stole the glommer to speed up his work. He never went to Sherman's Planet itself, as far as we know.

And the fact that the destination is Sherman's Planet is completely unnecessary. Just as another Klingon captain could've been substituted for Koloth, so another colony world could've been substituted for Sherman's. And since tribbles eat anything, there's no reason the foodstuff they were shipping had to be quintotriticale or any kind of triticale.

So I would've ditched the grain and the reference to Sherman's. Thinking it over, I would've kept Koloth, since his resentment of Jones and tribbles due to their past encounter is part of what drives him in the episode. With a random Klingon captain, it wouldn't have been as personal.

Also, instead of doing another "tribbles propagate exponentially aboard the ship" story, just in a slightly different way, maybe there was another, more original way to do the story. Maybe the tribbles could've been perfectly harmless and the glommer would turn out to be the real threat. Or it could've been the glommer that grew giant from eating lots of tribbles. It was a genetic experiment, after all, and by the laws of fiction, the odds of any given experimental genetically engineered creature turning gigantic and running amok are at least 50 percent.

 

[Tallguy]

I did say "is near".

IIRC there were some drafts where the glommer was going to start eating crew as well as tibbles.

Oh, as for the thread topic: Begin with Beyond the Farthest Star. End with The Counterclock Incident. (Terrible episode. But conceptually a fitting end.) Anything in the middle doesn't matter, order-wise.

 

[Cap'n Calhoun]

Thanks for the thoughts.

Just to clarify for context, I've seen the whole series multiple times, so I know the series doesn't have any continuity and that you could basically randomize the list and it wouldn't affect the experience that much. I'm primarily curious if anyone knows why the orders are so different. I know the order changes for TOS have been explored quite a bit.

It's entirely possible that it was based on the network's choices, but I'm wondering if Fontana and company might've also fast-tracked certain episodes even though they started production later.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I suspect These Are the Voyages: Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek in the 1970s might address this. I know Cushman's work is kind of controversial for some, and his accuracy isn't 100%, but there was a lot of good stuff in those first three volumes.

 

[mb22]

I think Bob Justman had more to do with airing order decisions than Fontana. I recall reading that he chose what episodes were re-run during the summer months.

 

[Tallguy]

I think Bob Justman had more to do with airing order decisions than Fontana. I recall reading that he chose what episodes were re-run during the summer months.

Not for TAS, surely?

 

[Cap'n Calhoun]

I think Bob Justman had more to do with airing order decisions than Fontana. I recall reading that he chose what episodes were re-run during the summer months.

I think that was true with TOS, but I don't think he was involved with TAS at all.

 

[mb22]

Not for TAS, surely?

I think that was true with TOS, but I don't think he was involved with TAS at all.

Oops! I was thinking of TOS, and forgot this was a TAS thread -- sorry!!

 

[Tallguy]

Oops! I was thinking of TOS, and forgot this was a TAS thread -- sorry!!

There was a better than even chance that you were going to come back with a quote from a post a page back that meant we were absolutely talking about TOS now.

 

[Cap'n Calhoun]

Some notes I've accumulated from These Are the Voyages: Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek in the 1970s:

• Peeples was commissioned to write what was intended to be the first episode, which became "Beyond the Farthest Star". Some referred to this as a pilot, though technically it wasn't since the show had been picked up already; regardless, it was commissioned with the specific intent of being the first episode. It was the first episode to complete the animation process and the first to air. (pp. 245–246, 268)
• Some sources say "Beyond the Farthest Star" was screened at World Con 1973, though Fontana says the only thing they showed (or had ready) was the credits. (pp. 261–262)
• "Beyond the Farthest Star" was assigned 22004 has the fourth story assignment, but it was the first episode produced. (p. 280)
• Despite "The Infinite Vulcan" being 22002, when the cast got together to record the first three episodes, it wasn't one of those. "Beyond the Fathest Star" and "Yesteryear" were prioritize so they would be ready to air in September. (p. 281)

It's also worth noting that, whereas the previous TATV books covered episodes in production order, this book covers them in airdate order.

The picture that I'm getting out of this is that the commonly-cited "production order" wasn't actually the order in which the episodes were produced. So, while I have some fondness for that order (if nothing else, it was used for the VHS releases), it seems very likely that the aired order was the order intended by the producers, and likely it's the order in which they were produced as well. (At least based on the 70 pages I've read so far out of the roughly 350 pages it has on TAS.)